Heaven

it turns out,
funnily enough,
is a sunny, warm, spacious, well-appointed suburban somewhat 70s house.

Well it is for a chronic urban dweller such as myself.
People who know me will appreciate how hysterically funny that is.
Of course it does help that the house is on the beach.

And not just any beach but 7 miles of isolated, pristine coast with just the odd local doing a bit of line fishing or a pair of retirees in comfy pants and floppy hats out walking their golden retrievers before breakfast/cocktail hour.
Does this make me sounds old?
Yes it probably does but I'm with Elly Varrenti (excerpt here) in that now I'm on the other side of the big 4-0 I realise things really do change. And it's not necessarily about decrepitude, conservatism or boredom.
Just, change.
Change and different needs.

Yes, I've been away on holidays

We rented a beach house down the coast for a few days, where if you could rouse yourself away from the soporifically comfy couch nestled between sun-trap floor-to-ceiling windows and hypnotic wood-fuelled fire, all you had to do was slip on a warm coat, some (by now utterly impregnated with sand) Birkenstock flipflops, usher the dogs out the door, pad a few metres down through the Casuarina canopy and into a tunnel of dense, cool Melaleuca scrub with its clean, resinous smell, yielding to an utterly glorious expanse of beach.

And oh how 7 mile walks twice a day on wet sand works muscles you never knew you had, I tell you if you did that every day you would have buns of steel.
That and the fact that my ever-present 'drafting back' -you know that awful knot of tension between your shoulder blades-? Miraculously melted away people! Along with the neurotic solipsistic mental chatter that fills my mind back in the city.

Hurling yourself into wintertime surf in your underwear (it's Winter; it's not like I packed my cossie and I didn't want to scandalise said fisherfolk/retirees that much) -if you survive the cardiac arrest-?
Makes you feel Really. Alive. So. Very. Very. Alive.
Last thing you'd expect at 8 oclock on a Sunday night in the middle of winter in Orient Point?
A lovely Lebanese extended family cooking you some beautiful fresh perch for dinner and making you eat their home made Baklava.

I should go on holiday more often.

Pattern: Marrow Joe by Woolly Wormhead's Going Straight, in my new 'desert island' yarn: Trekking XXL Degrade. Mods: omit slip stitch detail; 9 repeats rather than 10 (no matter how tight I try to knit, it's still loosey goosey) Instructions: Team jauntily with Icebreaker jacket, pop on head, go on long beach walk. Feel warm.